Thinking Anglicans

APO: Bishop Schofield replies to PB

The Bishop of San Joaquin has published his reply to the earlier letter from the Presiding Bishop of ECUSA. You can read it in full on his diocesan website or there is a PDF here which looks more likely to endure as a URL.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

27 Comments
Oldest
Newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Cheryl Clough
18 years ago

Found the phrase “not advancing the date” interesting. The path has been chosen, it’s just a case of what straw is going to be the excuse to proceed. They will probably try to find the straw that will give them the biggest leverage possible.

NP
NP
18 years ago

again – remember the network sits very comfortably with 70m+ anglicans – they are claerly waiting to see what the AC is going to provide for them…..and it will provide for them beause they are very ordinary anglicans, not radical revolutionaries and innovators…..

they have not created the current problems (note similar people in “the west” eg in the UK have not been driven to similar actions so maybe TEC needs to consider its own actions before demonising these ordinary anglicans?)

Merseymike
Merseymike
18 years ago

Generally, ‘ordinary Anglicans’ don’t attempt to leave the Anglican church in their own country….

Kurt
Kurt
18 years ago

“[A]gain – remember the network sits very comfortably with 70m+ anglicans – they are claerly waiting to see what the AC is going to provide for them…..and it will provide for them beause they are very ordinary anglicans, not radical revolutionaries and innovators…..”NP

Rubbish! No one has taken a scientific poll of what 70m+ (an inflated number anyway-k) Anglicans feel about this. We American Episcopalians have a real revolutionary tradition, one of which we are justly proud. It’s understandable that Tory-loving Brits (on the losing side, after all) might not see it the same way. Cheers!

kieran crichton
kieran crichton
18 years ago

It has been said before, but the game is up. All that remains is a rather unpleasant bit of blackmail: I’ll slow down the schism if you don’t make a presentment against me – and I’ll even be nice on the way out while I ransack the shop. What happens if neither Canterbury nor Abuja will swallow St Joaquin whole? What happens if Abuja insists that they start from scratch – no property, assets *NOTHING* ‘tainted’ by previous association with TEC? What if Canterbury were to insist that they remain in TEC, no special pleading and no particular deals? What… Read more »

John Robison
John Robison
18 years ago

A Donatist accusing others of apostasy? NP- They are not “ordinary Anglicans” in other than the most generic of terms. They sit comfortably with the primates of around half of the Provinces. However, there is no real and direct evidence what the typical Anglican in the misnamed “Global South” really thinks on the topic. Any dissent from the line out of the mouth of +Abuja is cut off and he even gets to call on the police in his home country to enforce his views. The crisis is one of theological innovation in that an arguable question of moral theology… Read more »

Shawn+
Shawn+
18 years ago

I don’t think that it is demonising anyone to require them to remain in the dialogue/at the table/in the stream, and, essentially, remain “Anglican.” This is a denomination that has always prided itself on maintaining the “Via Media,” and looking at the history of the Anglican tradition, there are many examples of staying in relationship though points of view are challenged (from the outset, for example, the ecclesiological tensions of the Elizabethan settlement, or the repercussions of the Oxford Movement of the nineteenth century). To leave the dialogue is to leave the communion of Canterbury, and there is no hard… Read more »

Leonardo Ricardo
18 years ago

Blame, shame, self-destructiveness and rampant defiance by +Schofield…he’s exchanged his mitre for a Kamakazi helmet and he’s taking his diocese down with him if he can get away with it!

NP
NP
18 years ago

but chaps – do you not see that TEC has moved away from the AC and “the network” has not really changed…….they clearly sit more easily in the AC than TEC……

this is not a controversial point

Marshall Scott
18 years ago

Withal the apparent backhanded compliment and mixed message of Bishop Schofield’s last paragraph, I don’t see how we can expect anyone here to alter course. He has charged TEC (including me, thank you) with apostasy. Considering how he expresses his view of his ordination vows (to “Anglican faith” rather than to “the institution of TEC”), he doesn’t really have room to stay: he has given control to TEC, as it were. That is, if TEC doesn’t change direction (and since I believe profoundly that I and we among the majority of Episcopalians, who believe welcome to the point of full… Read more »

NP
NP
18 years ago

I think Marshall is right – happily +Schofield et al will not have to accept anything provisional because the AC will provide a long-term home for the network people

John Robison
John Robison
18 years ago

NP- TEC hasn’t moved away from the AC. A portion of it has moved away, as a consiquence of the inovations they, themselves have take up that I mentioned in my last post.

Kurt
Kurt
18 years ago

What “AC” are we talking about, NP? The Global South fundagelicals, who will soon be setting up their own shop, is it? You can have that “communion.”

Ford Elms
Ford Elms
18 years ago

NP, Remember as well that 500 years ago or so, give or take, a relatively small group of people in Northern Europe decided that because their reading of the Bible in their own language indicated to them that the Church had gotten some things wrong, they could no longer trust the Church at all. In their day, they were the rebels, and the majority of the Church disagreed with them, still does in fact. They introduced innovations that on-one had thought of before, and justified them by claiming for the Bible an authority it had never been considered to have.… Read more »

Martin Reynolds
Martin Reynolds
18 years ago

The problem with this is the twelve month deadline. It is a curious and rather crude way of re-introducing the haste element into these proceedings that Rowan has been doing all he can to remove. There is some desperation amongst some feeling that if the momentum is lost then they will be lost, and forced to negotiate along the lines the Presiding Bishop has now openly offered in the proposal on a Primatial Vicar. In hanging himself by a thread this bishop must hope that it will give the GS Primates ammunition at the next Primates meeting to say: “Look… Read more »

Cheryl Clough
18 years ago

Martin I could relate to your concerns about deadlines. I feel the same thing when I hear ultimatums elsewhere around the world. E.g. give us a peace deal and vacate “x” land within six months or we will start actively colluding to blow up your children again. You didn’t give us what we want? That means you don’t want peace! Bang Bang That’s not making peace – that’s using threats to intimidate. Ditto with some of the players within the Anglican Communion. Merseymikes’ comment on another thread earlier this week was spot on. To paraphrase: Those who despise and hold… Read more »

Dave
Dave
18 years ago

A true non-starter, already rejected at the earlier meeting. As the late Lee Buck described: “You cannot continue to be subject to corrupt authority and not be affected by it. Staying under the purview of ECUSA is cohabiting with evil. This is very blunt, but, it seems that only blunt and forceful talk will get real action, at this time in the history of the church. You orthodox and conservative members of ECUSA have been misled and “taken in” by such crap as “listening” “delay” “obfuscation such as ‘diverse center’ “ “pluriform truth” “your truth and my truth” and on… Read more »

JCF
JCF
18 years ago

“but chaps – do you not see that TEC has moved away from the AC and “the network” has not really changed…….they clearly sit more easily in the AC than TEC……
this is not a controversial point”

Sorry NP, old boy: this is your *framing* of the terms, and nothing more.

[*NB: I couldn’t get that pdf link to work—frankly, for the sake of my blood pressure, I’m sort of relieved! ;-/]

Göran Koch-Swahne
18 years ago

NP wrote: ” again – remember the network sits very comfortably with 70m+ anglicans – they are clearly waiting to see what the AC is going to provide for them…..” The Network does not in fact “sit very comfortably” with the Primates, which is why all this tarrying and wavering, year after year. Precisely the claim to o w n a majority of the Anglican Provinces proves this, for – numbers games, or no – at no instance has the 6 or 8 more extreme Primates been able to gather more than 17 or 18 of their colleagues (never mind… Read more »

JayVinVermont
JayVinVermont
18 years ago

Well, I’d read the Bishop Katharine’s letter last week, but read it again. Then I read the Bishop Schofield’s letter. The differences in tone and spirit are striking, like night and day. The PB’s letter was strong, yet pastoral and written with some respect; she also noted Bp Schofield’s and the diocesan convention actions (actions of a few in the scheme of things) would effect many people in San Joaquin. She’s looking at the bigger picture and show concern for the total church; Schofield, on the other hand, is being very territorial (much like an animal that’s been cornered). The… Read more »

John Henry
John Henry
18 years ago

I have observed the behavior of the ‘usual suspects’, +Jack Leo Iker & Co., for several years. They were in impaired communion with PBs Edmund Browning, Frank Griswold and-now-PB Katharine Jefferts Schori. They have absented themselves from House of Bishops meetings to make their points. General Convention deputies, both clerical and lay, have observed, with great concern, that +Jack Leo walks out of the room at public hearings whenever someone he disapproves of approaches the microphone. It is always his way or the highway. Of late, +Bob Duncan, who already imagines himself to be a Primate and PB recognized by… Read more »

drdanfee
drdanfee
18 years ago

Bishop Schofield’s reply is hardly a surprise, really. What else was he going to do? Repent of his schismatic power drives? Say he was sorry for mistaking a diversity of tenable modern Christian views concerning embodiment or sexuality as nothing but pure evil? Suddenly look in a mirror and see the face of the bishop who has been busy, bearing false witness against a progressive Jesus Freak Christian neighbor? The ball and its momentum is rapidly shifting to PB KJS and the provincial church – and probably to that extent away from the parsed presuppositions, forever loudly asserted, typically dedicated… Read more »

NP
NP
18 years ago

interesting how some here seem impressed by political skills and acting tough from KJS……

-some even seem to think the ABC will see the AC split for the sake of a small radical minority led by TEC – but that is very unlikely if you look at his record to date (eg J John affair)

Ford Elms
Ford Elms
17 years ago

NP, The Jeffrey John affair is indeed enlightening. I admire JJ’s saintly behaviour. He stepped aside for the good of the Church. I’d suggest you look up the life of St. Chad of Lichfield, the collect for his Feast goes: “Almighty God, whose servant Chad, for the peace of the Church, relinquished cheerfully the honours that had been thrust upon him, only to be rewarded with equal responsibility: Keep us, we pray, from thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, and ready at all times to step aside for others, that the cause of Christ may be… Read more »

J. C. Fisher
17 years ago

“Wise as serpents, gentle as doves” is ALWAYS a continuum.

Perhaps it’s because we saw Jeffrey John+ take such a dove-like tack (and be virtually shot-gunned for it :-0), that we see a bold (+GR) and BOLDER (++KJS) serpentine approach, subsequently?

“To everything, there is a season”

God bless TEC, and her *fiercely* faithful PB, Katharine Jefferts Schori! 😀

drdanfee
drdanfee
17 years ago

My admiration for KJS has mainly to do with her saying things clearly and publicly, without hammering presuppositions, and without dumbing down the institutional or other complexities. Of course she is trained to do this as a scientist, but plenty of realignment leaders have education and ought to be able to help lift the schismatic conversation to higher discernment – If they wished, which I see no evidence they wish. So far as the splitting off of TEC by the alleged majorities of self-righteous conservative Anglicans, well that is hardly dependent on PB KJS and the rest of us. Our… Read more »

NP
NP
17 years ago

yes, Ford – and others did not and do not follow JJ’s example, creating chaos from which all are suffering – sadly

27
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x